The Battlefield 6 beta becomes the biggest thing for Battlefield ever on Steam, going beyond even Call of Duty

If you’re after more evidence that this year’s Battlefield 6 launch is going to be one of the biggest ever for the series, the game’s beta has plenty to offer there. Over the weekend, the beta’s first open weekend took place, and it’s been dominating the charts on Steam.

This comes just a day or two after the initial, invite-only portion of the beta broke records for the series on Steam. This was only the beginning, however.

On Staruday and Sunday, the Battlefield 6 beta became available to download and play without the need for a code. Over that same period, the game’s concurrent player numbers jumped yet again on Steam, as a result of the influx of new players.

The Battlefield 6 beta was frequently in Steam’s top three most played games, peaking at 521,079 concurrent players (via SteamDB), which is a big number. For one, it’s bigger than the peak concurrent for any Battlefield title on Steam.

More interestingly, it’s bigger than Call of Duty’s highest-ever concurrent, too. The Call of Duty app, which contains several Call of Duty releases at once, has a historic peak of 491,670 concurrent players. That includes free-to-play mode Warzone, premium yearly releases, as well as betas and other limited tests.

Call of Duty’s biggest moment on Steam arrived with the series’ return to Steam, which coincided with the release of Modern Warfare 2 in 2022. Last year’s Black Ops 6 was certainly popular, but the numbers were nowhere near as high as MW2’s concurrents.

Steam is not the only way to play Battlefield 6 on PC, either, so there’s likely a contigent of players on EA’s own app and the Epic Games Store that do not factor into that peak, to say nothing of players on PlayStation and Xbox.

Whicever way you slice it, BF6 beta’s figures are impressive. Even if the game’s full launch on October 10 does not achieve the same peaks, the rumoured free-to-play mode may very well get it there – or even beyond.